Two sets of friends are going to Paris in May, and I've suffered a bout of nostalgia in writing both of them with a series of tips: my favorite, non-touristy, authentically French, and relatively inexpensive restaurants, the best out-of-the-way museum, how to get into the Louvre without standing in line, and the cheapest (less than a euro) and most practical first purchase.  My passport expires in March, and since I haven't been farther than Kansas City in the last two years, it seems unnecessary to go through the hassle of renewing it.  Still, not having a passport seems like a surrender.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned reading Ian McEwan's unsatisfactory spy novel, Sweet Tooth, set in the days when Communism was our chief fear and enemy.  Thinking about those days brought up another kind of nostalgia about my two years teaching in Communist countries.  In 1979-80, I taught in Skopje, Macedonia, then a part of Yugoslavia.  It was a watershed year, as midway through, Tito died, and despite his attempts to insure that the country would stay together after his death, Yugoslavia has passed into the history books.  When we arrived in Belgrade for orientation, a Yugoslav official told us that we should feel free to talk politics--with four exceptions, four assumptions that underpinned Yugoslav society and that were not up for discussion: the unity and brotherhood of the Yugoslav people (it didn't take many years to see how flimsy that assumption was), the "third way" of an independent foreign policy for the non-aligned nations, Tito's economic version of socialism, and the personality of Marshal Josip Broz Tito.  That didn't seem to leave a lot of room for discussion, but we went with it.

There were only seven other Americans in Skopje: the director of the American Center and his wife; Larry and Suzanne, the American couple I lived with; Jack, who had come to Macedonia to be a writer, and two Mormon missionaries.  Sweet Tooth is about spies, and one of the questions both here and later in Bulgaria was who was a "spy" or at least employed by the CIA.  We could rule out the Mormons, who were having a miserable year.  Their language training hadn't been effective, they were always short of money, and they had little success in a country that was officially atheist and historically Orthodox.  We assumed that Tom, the American Center director, was, but he was so blatantly American that it was hard to imagine him doing undercover work.  He drove a huge Buick station wagon that was almost impossible to navigate in the small streets of Skopje.  He and his wife went to the small Catholic church (the home of Mother Teresa), where the women sat on one side and the men on the other; he called attention to himself by insisting that his wife sit with him on the men's side.  The only time I was conscious of sometimes being followed was on a trip with Tom and his wife into Kosovo, already a delicate region, to visit a remote monastery.  A car seemed to be trailing us and finally passed us and stopped the car.  We had missed the turnoff, the two men said, and we needed to turn around.  We did.  They did.  They stayed in the monastery with us and then suggested that we return directly to Skopje.  Jack was more mysterious.  Why would someone move to Macedonia to become a writer?  He didn't seem actually to spend time writing, and he wasn't doing travelogues.  What did he do with his days?  But that led to a larger question: if indeed Tom and/or Jack was CIA, what were they supposed to be discovering?  They didn't seem to be more plugged in to the local community than the rest of us.  Tom was certainly too conspicuous to be doing anything secretive.  Or did I have an exaggerated view of the CIA?  Were they just there to sniff out the general atmosphere?  Is that all that Intel on the ground really means?

The situation was somewhat different during 1995-96 when I spent the year in Sofia, Bulgaria.  Although the Berlin Wall had fallen six years earlier, Bulgaria had been slow to abandon Communist principles.  Finally, that year they did--with no preparation.  It seemed that in the fall, every night on TV there would be footage of the opening of a new private bank, complete with blessings from the Orthodox archbishop.  And then every night in the spring, there'd be footage of a bank failing (including mine), all the money having disappeared to Luxembourg or Monaco or some other safe haven and all the officials having disappeared as well.  New businesses were springing up, and although there might be absolutely nothing in a building, there was always a sign on the door saying they were insured.  What they were insured against was the insurance company, which would bomb or set on fire the new business if it refused to cooperate.  Those who had the debeli vrski (fat connections) in the old Communist system simply kept their powers, now in the name of capitalism.  The economy collapsed so fast that by the time I left, a full professor at my university, the most important in Bulgaria, was making the equivalent of $18 a month.

Since Sofia was the capital, there were more Americans there than in Skope, and once again, it was hard not to ask who was CIA and what they were doing.  One woman, who seemed to have no obvious purpose for being in Sofia, was a clear candidate, though once again, she made herself terribly conspicuous.  She lived in a large house, had had all of her furniture, including a piano and an American refrigerator, shipped to Sofia, and, although she didn't usually hang out with the other Americans, no one had any idea what she was really doing.  And then there was one of my best friends, who was ostensibly doing economic research, but didn't seem to spend a lot of time on that project.  Even though he and his wife were my best American friends, I couldn't ask.  He went on to governmental posts in Belgrade, Istanbul, and Montenegro, so at some point he was clearly not just a Ph.D. candidate.  But again, if either or both of these two were CIA agents, what were they supposed to be finding out?  What, if any, access to information did they have that the rest of us didn't?

It was and remains a bafflement.  Sometimes, though, I could amuse myself wondering if other Americans (and Yugoslavs and Bulgarians) were making similar speculations about me.  Why otherwise would I have bothered to learn Macedonian and Bulgarian?  They're not exactly practical languages in Topeka.  It was rather fun to think of myself as a suspected spy, genially teaching my classes and going to parties, but secretly doing whatever it is that spies are supposed to do.